Solving the minion problem: Waves!

[Doctor Proctor]

Now, I have used the minions as pure ranged attacks, they lasted longer, but they did a total of 25 pts of damage the entire fight (which is nice!) but the real mobs were taken down like punks, and the party spent 3 healing surges that entire fight...

In that case then, changing out the ranged minions with actual mobs wouldn't have changed much anyway. Your players still massacred your regular mobs it seems. Is it possible you're going too light on them then, and that the minion mechanics themselves aren't the problem here?

Since 4th Edition is new, and minions are a brand new concept, I am trying to find that "magic blend" where minions are just right and real mobs are just right... but according to one podcast with a designer (my friend has it on his pc, don't remember the name of the designer) heroic tier is pretty much supposed to be candy-land and allow players to learn how to play their characters, not truly be in danger of death at any point...

Well, I come from old-school where it is important in first 5 levels to hand the characters a hard blow so they understand that death is possible (not actually kill anyone, but show em they CAN die) so that they don't feel like immortals for the entire game and all...

If there is no challenge, where is the fun? No risk, no gain....

Or is it also possible that you're trying to do something that's not intended by the system? If you want to make it so that 1st level characters quiver in their boots at the thought of the next encounter, then by all means do so. That doesn't mean the minion mechanic is broken though, just that you're trying to make encounters in the Heroic much more deadly than they were designed to be.

 

[-Avalon-]

No, I just see it as bad when the party can watch tv and play other games while waltzing through an entire dungeon... because they aren't worried about any of what they are doing....

They see enemies, they kill them

They don't search for traps (because the traps rules make them entirely too difficult to find, and more of an annoyance that a real danger for 1 or 2 rds... until the kill it also, or run past it)

They found a spot on a wall that was obviously a secret door, could not open it up, so they went back to the city and got crowbars or the equivalent and began digging through the wall because the rules on locks are more difficult than the rules on hardness and all...

The only thing I have not really tried is time constraints... maybe if I do a time challenge, they will feel some urgency and pressures... but as of right now, they love the storyline I have, but the rules seem to keep things from being challenging in the least...lol

So far, the mob that has gotten the most fear out of them has been the goblin hexer... the don't mind the hobgoblin warcasters, archers, soldiers, etc, or any of the goblins... just the Goblin Hexer... if they see one of those, they will run past anything else and kill him 1st rd above anything... as a 3rd level creature, they make a 6th lvl pc hit like a 1st level pc by giving them -4 to hit total...